Paris (AFP)

New measures, new reports and highlights: an update on the latest developments in the Covid-19 pandemic around the world.

- Escalation of cases in Europe (WHO) -

The number of new cases of Covid-19 in Europe increased by 9% to reach just over a million, after six weeks of "promising decline", announced Thursday the regional management of the World Health Organization ( WHO).

- Sputnik V to the EU -

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced on Thursday that it had started examining the Russian vaccine Sputnik V, a crucial step in view of its deployment in the European Union.

Responding immediately to this announcement, the Russian authorities said they were ready to provide vaccines to 50 million Europeans from June 2021.

In recent weeks, a public ping-pong had taken place between the developers of the Sputnik V vaccine, claiming to have submitted the file for approval to the European regulator, and the AEM, responding to have received nothing.

- Vaccines against variants -

Five countries including the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Canada intend to approve under an accelerated procedure the new generations of vaccines capable of neutralizing the variants of the coronavirus, according to a recommendation unveiled Thursday by a consortium of their drug agencies.

This approach builds on the procedure already in place for seasonal influenza vaccines, modified each year to cope with new strains of the virus.

- Lufthansa: record loss -

The airline giant Lufthansa, saved from bankruptcy by the German state, suffered a record loss of 6.7 billion euros in 2020 and also forecasts a year 2021 in the red due to the Covid-19 pandemic which plunged the sector into an unprecedented crisis.

The leading European company, which only operated 31% of capacity in 2020, has revised its demand forecasts for 2021 downwards due to a slower recovery in travel.

It does not foresee a return to 90% of the pre-pandemic supply until "the middle of the decade".

- Global impact on childhood cancer -

Decrease in diagnoses, even interruption of treatments: the Covid pandemic has had a negative impact on services that treat childhood cancer around the world, in particular in less wealthy countries, according to a study published Thursday in the journal The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health.

- More than 2.5 million dead -

The pandemic has killed at least 2.56 million people worldwide, according to a report established by AFP from official sources Thursday at 11:00 GMT.

The United States is the country with the most deaths with 519,064 deaths, followed by Brazil (259,271) with a new 24-hour record announced Wednesday (1,910 dead), Mexico (188,044), India (157,435) and the United Kingdom (123,783).

These figures, based on the daily reports of the health authorities, without including the reassessments based on statistical bases, are generally underestimated.

burs-kd / ber / lch

© 2021 AFP